“I grow old, I grow old, my eyes are blind, I am only thinking.”
“Of him whom I met when I was young. Maybe it was forty years ago.”
“But do you not know, then, that he is dead? ... Pale beldam, you do not answer; your lips are white, you breathe no more...”
There! That was the strange tale of the girl in the tower. Wait, Æsop, wait a little: there was something I forgot. One day she heard her lover's voice in the courtyard, and she fell on her knees and blushed. And that was when she was forty years...
I bury you, Eva, and in humility kiss the sand above your grave. A luxuriant, rose-red memory flowers in me when I think of you; I am as if drenched in blessing at the memory of your smile. You gave all; all did you give, and it cost you nothing, for you were the wild child of life itself. But others, the miserly ones who begrudge even a glance, can have all my thoughts. Why? Ask the twelve months and the ships on the sea; ask the mysterious God of the heart...
“You never go out shooting now? Æsop is running loose in the woods; he is after a hare.”
Some days passed. Herr Mack looked me up. He was hollow-eyed; his face was grey. I thought: Is it true that I can see through my fellows, or is it not? I do not know, myself.
Herr Mack spoke of the landslip, the catastrophe. It was a misfortune, a sad accident; I was in no way to blame.
“If it was someone who wished to separate Eva and me at any price, he has gained his end. God's curse be on him!”
Herr Mack looked at me suspiciously. He murmured something about the fine funeral. Nothing had been spared.
I sat admiring the alertness of his mind. He would have no compensation for the boat that my landslide had crushed.
“Oh, but surely,” I said, “will you not have some payment for the boat and the tar-bucket and the brush?”
“No, my dear Lieutenant,” he answered. “How could you think of such a thing?” And he looked at me with hatred in his eyes.
For three weeks I saw nothing of Edwarda. Yes, once I met her at the store: when I went to buy some bread, she stood inside the counter looking over some different sorts of cloth stuff. Only the two assistants were there besides.
I greeted her aloud, and she looked up, but did not answer. It occurred to me that I could not ask for bread while she was there; I turned to the assistants and asked for powder and shot. While they were weighing it out, I watched her.